There was a time, only three seasons ago, when the Jets were Road Warriors, when they embraced Us-Against-the-World and refused to blink until the sounds of a silent stadium were deafening to them.
There was a day, only three seasons ago, when Ryan and his bawdy Jets marched into the belly of the Tom Brady-Bill Belichick beast and shocked that world with a 28-21 divisional playoff upset, the single biggest win of the Ryan Era in a game he had branded the second biggest in franchise history.
And now? The Jets will head to Carolina for a game that only means everything for them as roadkill, as shrinking violets who would apparently sooner have a hot chocolate and marshmallows than stand up to a hostile team and crowd.
Why have the Jets struggled on the road (1-5)?
“I don’t know. That’s a good question,” Ryan said.
That’s not a good answer. Are they men or are they mice? This is the time, this is the moment, for Geno Smith and the Jets to be men. Roadkillers instead of Roadkill.
“Sometimes it happens to younger teams where you first learn how to win at home, then you’ll learn how to win on the road,” Ryan said. “But it can’t be an excuse. All you can finish is 8-8 if that’s the case. Clearly, we have to learn how to win on the road.”
The Jets haven’t won on the road since Atlanta. Since then: Bengals 49, Jets 9; Bills 37, Jets 14; Ravens 19, Jets 3.
So it isn’t only Dave & Busters. And it isn’t only the rookie quarterback, because Mark Sanchez won two playoff games as a rookie quarterback.
But if the rookie quarterback can’t do better than he has in his last three road games — no touchdowns and seven interceptions — the Jets are doomed, and the Ryan Watch will intensify.
“There’s things that he also continues to learn when he’s on the road is making sure that I’m not just casually giving signals, casually talking to the line,” said David Garrard, who was a young quarterback once. “You have to know that guys hear you, you have to be able to see in their eyes, that they got the call.
“If you just take it for granted that ‘he should have gotten it,’ then that’s when somebody’s off and it makes you look bad as a quarterback, and so those are things that we have to continue to work on, and as we play these away games, they will be able to start drawing on past memories of, ‘You know what? This happened the last time, so I need to make sure that everybody’s on the same page.”
David Garrard, who was a young quarterback once, has continued to implore Smith to use his legs the way he did against the Raiders (five carries, 50 yards and a touchdown), a dimension all the more important on the road.
“A lot of times when the pocket is collapsing, it seems like there’s a lot of chaos out there, a quarterback can do a really good job of moving around in the pocket, using your legs, scrambling to pass, scrambling to run, and really quieting the crowd down, because everybody hates when a quarterback escapes the pocket and gets a first down,” Garrard said. “It changes a lot of things for the defense too — they hate it, defenses hate when a quarterback gets mobile on them. Sometimes on the road, it comes down to the quarterback just creating plays to get them out of danger.”
Smith (3-6) didn’t use his legs in rowdy Baltimore.
“So I’m telling him, ‘Remember this, remember how this feels, when you escape the pocket and you make plays with your legs, how everybody that gets excited that is a Jets player or fan, and how the other team just gets demoralized just because they have you covered but here you go taking off for 20 yards.’ ” Garrard said.
Smith and the Jets have an historically bad minus-14 turnover ratio on the road, worst in franchise history.
“I really know this, that good football teams win anywhere, once you get to that point,” offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg said, “and so hopefully we can get to that point where the crowd noise bothers us very little. As far as specifically playing good at the quarterback spot, your offensive spot, your offensive unit has to play good for a quarterback to play well, and so that’s part of it as well.”
The Jets will need to be mentally tougher at Bank of America Stadium.
“I know right now we have to do a better job of weathering the storm,” Willie Colon said. “There’s so many instances where if we give up an early touchdown or an early turnover that the boat’s kind of rocking and we’re waiting for the next guy to kind of make something happen so we can get out of a rut but, collectively, that can only happen if we do it together.”
The 2009-10 Jets enjoyed the villain role.
“I think you have to look at it as us versus everyone,” Nick Mangold said. “Kind of make it so that it’s just the guys you have in that locker room going out there getting ready for the game, so you kind of batten down the hatches a little bit.”
“Every team is unique,” D’Brickashaw Ferguson said. “Even though we have that same New York Jet name on it, the players, staff, that all changes year to year. But our goal always remains the same, is to be a successful team, and to win games.”
Good to know. Except you can’t be a successful team until you win games as road warriors. Ryan sounds like Gene Hackman, coach of Hickory High, measuring the height of the hoop inside Hinkle Fieldhouse, when he says: “It’s the same game. It’s the same dimension of field and everything else.”
“Hoosiers II” or bust.